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by iwwr 1702 days ago
Quarter depends on reporting periods, or fiscal year, which does not match calendar year everywhere.
1 comments

  > which does not match calendar year everywhere
Yes, this is the reason that ISO-8601 ranges are not sufficient and a Quarter indicator is necessary.
The problem is that if you carry the string '2021-Q1' across countries borders, the days it represents change. That makes for a very bad time interchange format.

I agree that this feature makes quarter indicator necessary. But it also makes it required that the string is something more complex.

If you carry the string '2021-10-24' across countries borders, the moments in time that it represents change as well.

That makes doesn't make it a bad time interchange format for certain use cases, though. Just like everything else with time, one must be aware of caveats. Those include timezones, leap periods, culture, DST, formats, legislation (modern and ancient), etc.

But it overlaps. It's off, but less than 100% off.

"2021-Q1" can be a completely different and non-overlapping range between regions, and even between companies in the same region.

2021-10-24 in UTC+14 (Line Islands) and UTC-10 (Hawaii) are, in fact, 100% off.
Yeah the Line Islands are the exception as always.